The invention disclosed herein is related to U.S. Pat. No. 5,365,514 by Hershey and Waclawsky et al entitled "Event Driven Interface for a System for Monitoring and Controlling a Data Communications Network", which is assigned to the IBM Corporation and incorporated herein by reference.
This invention is also related to U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,070 by Hershey and Waclawsky et al entitled "Information Collection Architecture and Method for a Data Communications Network", which is assigned to the IBM Corporation and incorporated herein by reference.
The problem of effectively and accurately monitoring and analyzing ATM networks is significant. There is a critical network management need to acquire and analyze ATM network traffic patterns. This problem is not adequately solved today. In order to successfully manage and control an ATM network, a system has to be able to monitor the substantial cell rate of ATM systems in real time. As traffic loads increase, cell discard activity can effect media utilization and overall network performance. Because of the very high speeds found in ATM networks, monitoring ATM media activity burstiness at any instant in time is also very important for good network management and control. Today, activities attempted in this area capture large quantities of data, missing substantial portions under varying conditions (load, buffers . . . etc.). Unfortunately, large quantities of data are captured when in most cases only small amounts of information are required.
The above cited patents by Hershey, et al. describe an Event Driven Interface (EDI) which is a mechanism for identifying bit patterns in the serial bit stream of a data communications network. The Event Driven Interface performs pattern recognition based upon a program defined by control vectors. The Event Driven Interface has an input connected to the data communications network for receiving the serial bit stream and for performing a logical pattern recognition on the serial bit stream to produce event vector signals as an output in response to the identification of specific, predefined patterns in the bit stream.
It would be useful to apply the realtime pattern recognition capability of the Event Driven Interface to the problem of monitoring, analyzing, and diagnosing (problem determination) an ATM network.